Age of Warriors
by July Storms
Summary: FE: Awakening. Virion x Sully. Bad Future. Virion gave a shrug of his shoulders. "I think that we would be foolish to assume that riding into battle will, by default, grant us an assured victory," he said. "Should we fail, it will fall to others to take our place."


**Age of Warriors**

**Prompt**: "Shit, are you bleeding?" & "Shh, c'mere." Virion x Sully.

**Notes**: Requested by Harblkun on Tumblr. This is the bad future.

* * *

It was just a small cut, barely worth noticing, but it made Sully's chest tighten anyway. She forced the panic down, forced it deep down and far away, and hated that she felt it in the first place. It wasn't like her to flip out over such things. It wasn't like her to worry so much.

She was strong and she was brave and she had never felt quite so sick at the sight of blood before in her life.

"Sully?"

Virion's voice cut through her thoughts and she shook her head, made herself swallow; her mouth felt dry. "Shit," she croaked out, licking her chapped lips. "Are you bleeding?"

Of course he was, but she had to ask anyway, had to say something to fill the silence.

"Ah," was Virion's response, and he smiled though it was strained. She wondered if the deepening lines at the corners of his eyes were from stress or because he was in pain. "It's nothing to worry about, I assure you."

"Yeah, well," she said, pushing him down into a sitting position, rolling back his sleeves, "that's what—that's what Frederick said, too, you know? To Cordelia. Right before he—"

She couldn't finish the sentence and Virion didn't say anything to contradict her. Frederick had hardly been dead a week, after all, and the loss was still…heavy.

While she squinted at the blood smeared over his arm, trying to find the edges of the wound with her eye, he tried to lighten the mood.

"You look lovely as always, my dear."

She ignored that. Tried to, anyway. "Don't be stupid," she told him. "Look, this will take—we need to have this looked at. I was going to wrap it, but I think it's… I think you need a healer to bind it. It's deep. You need to be careful. You can't… If something _happens_, Virion…"

"Then it will be so," he told her, softly. "You are not yourself today."

"Sorry," she muttered. She hadn't felt like herself for a while. "Frederick… I still can't—I knew him for so long, and… Losing him was proof, y'know? That any of us could be next."

"Yes," he said. "But I swear that you will return home to Kjelle."

"It's you she needs."

"Children need the nurturing care of their mother," he told her, softly.

Sully laughed, but her voice cracked and she tried not to think of the years and years of training under and with Frederick. Gods above, any one of them could die next. "I'm hardly the nurturing sort. You know that."

"You've done a fine job with her so far."

"I've turned her into a warrior is what I've done. She needs you to—to balance that out. To allow her to be a lady if she wants to be."

"This is an age of warriors, Sully. We've done our best—all we could have done, considering the extenuating circumstances."

She shook her head. "An age of warriors," she repeated. "You're saying you don't think we have a chance in hell, right?"

With his good hand, Virion brushed his hair behind his ears; it was growing shaggy. There was stubble on his face. God, she loved him, and she hated that they had never been given the chance to actually enjoy being married, to enjoy being parents. She refused to let herself think of Kjelle, still so young, glued, now, to Sumia's side. How much time would pass before Sumia flew to aid them in battle? Who would care for Kjelle, then?

Virion gave a shrug of his shoulders. "I think that we would be foolish to assume that riding into battle will, by default, grant us an assured victory," he said. "Should we fail, it will fall to others to take our place."

"And you think we will fail."

He paused, head tilting slightly to the side before he answered, gently, "I do not think we will win."

It hurt to hear. Years ago, Virion had been so hopeful, so optimistic. But time had forced all of them to reconsider the idealistic mentality of their youth. They were no longer so young, so silly, so sure of winning.

She supposed that receiving news of old friends dying did that to a person, made them consider the reality they lived in.

"You should go home," Sully said.

"What?"

"You should go home," she repeated. "Back to Kjelle. Spend some time with her—"

"I'm not leaving you, Sully."

"You're being selfish. Think of our daughter—she's just a child."

He fell silent. "I suppose I am selfish. I want to see her again, but I am not willing to leave you alone to do that. I am not willing to live in relative safety while you risk your life on the battlefield without me. Who will watch out for you, out here, with Sir Frederick gone and this army a scrap of what it once was?"

She sighed into her hands. "I don't know," she said. "Your arm needs—we need to get medical attention for you before we do anything else."

"The wound is not as bad as all that."

"It's bleeding," she said. "_You're_ bleeding. And one of these days it's gonna be—it's gonna be you dying on the battlefield somewhere and there won't be a damn thing I can do about it. And I'll hafta send a letter to Sumia so that she can read it to Kjelle, so that she can tell her that her papa's dead, so that she can send word to Rosanne, so that—"

"Shh." His good hand in her hair quieted her instantly; it was a familiar gesture, born of too many nights when neither of them could sleep, when they could do nothing but think and worry and fret. That was how they spent those nights—wrapped up in each other's arms, exchanging little touches as if to assure one another that they were both still there, still alive, still breathing.

"What are we gonna do?" she asked him, knowing he had no answer, knowing it wouldn't be right for one of them to leave the other to go home to Kjelle, and, at the same time, knowing that it wasn't right to die on the battlefield together to leave their little girl an orphan, either.

"Come here," he whispered, and pulled her close.

She let herself fall into the embrace. There was no energy left with which to argue with him.

When her back started to ache from the awkward posture she was holding, he said, kissing her hair, "I will go home, if that is what you truly desire."

Sully had to think about it for a moment. What she wanted—what she really desired more than anything else in the world—was to return home with Virion, to spend the rest of her days with him and with Kjelle. But she knew it wasn't going to happen; she would not be so lucky as to see her daughter grow into a woman.

"Yeah," she said, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Yeah, I… That's what I want. Teach her how to be a lady, all right? But don't let her slack in her training, either. It's—it might be important, someday."

"Of course, my dear," Virion said, letting her go to smooth down her hair. "I will leave tomorrow, in the morning, so that I will be sure to make it back."

"You need to see a healer now, then, so that you can rest."

"I'll not spending my last night here in the medical tent."

She let herself smile at that, just a little bit. "All right," she relented, "but your arm—it does need some attention. I'll feel better if you get it looked at."

He ignored her comment. "I'll write you every day, even if I don't post the letters. Then, when you return home in resplendent glory one day, you shall have hundreds of letters to read; you will know everything that you have missed by reading them. It will be as if—as if you were never away."

Sully bit her lip hard, forced the lump in her throat down. She'd never see Kjelle again, or Rosanne—and she'd never read those blasted letters. She tried not to picture them stacked neatly and tied with ribbons in the drawers of the great wooden desk in Virion's study.

"Yeah," she said. "I'll have to read your crazy florid thoughts. Hundreds of them. What fun."

"It will be a grand time," he assured her. "Now, let us find someone to look at my arm so that we can—so that the rest of the evening is ours."

"All right," she agreed, and linked her arm through his.


End file.
